AI Isn't Built for the Black Swan Era of Bad Weather

Using artificial intelligence to forecast the weather is getting so good – and so cheap - that meteorological services are starting to retire the expensive physics-based systems they have relied on. That’s a potentially big problem – and not just for weather forecasting.

Models built by Google DeepMind, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and others now match or outperform the best physics-based models on medium-range forecasting. During the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, DeepMind’s model outperformed almost every physical one, including the National Hurricane Center’s official forecasts. These models are faster and require a fraction of the computational infrastructure of those based on physics. This can for the first time give access to accurate weather forecasting to developing countries that couldn’t afford the supercomputers, satellite networks and trained meteorological workforces required by the older approach.